nourriture | grilled zucchini with onion jam, et cetera

not to be all braggity braggy but how gorg is that plate? i think herb sprigs make everything look fancy-pantsy. okay, let's get down to business, shall we? this meal was all kinds of summertime. it may look strange. you are thinking...zucchini and some kind of jam and egg and mint? no bueno, lady. but, yes bueno. surprising and bright. to the depths and heights of flavor.

last week, we spotted a tasty plate that chris bianco created using his goodies from the farm at agritopia and since we were about to get our box of the very same goodies we thought, YES let's copycat that thang! we really didn't know what bianco did, what we had was a decent snapshot and a very vague description...and the rest was up to us. and once our ingredients were in house, on hand...we just went for it. and it paid off big time.

here's what you will need for a meal to serve 3 people:

2 red onions

2-3 tablespoons evoo, plus more for grilling the zucchini

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons honey

celtic salt | pepper

1 tablespoon butter, plus more for frying the eggs

3-4 tablespoons balsamic

1 cinnamon stick

1 bay leaf

2 sprigs rosemary

Dash of cayenne

Dash of ground ginger

3-5 eggs, depending on how many each person wants

3 zucchinis

5 or so sprigs of mint

method: evoo in pan, dice onion and add to pan on low to medium heat. add salt and rosemary, allow onion to become soft and translucent - not brown. keep stirring in order to cook onions evenly, and perfume onions with the rosemary. once the liquid has evaporated, remove rosemary and add all remaining ingredients, including salt and pepper. increase heat to bring liquid to a boil, and allow to cook until the excess liquid has evaporated. remove bay leaf and cinnamon stick and set aside.

while the jam is cooking, chop up remaining rosemary and add to a bowl with a few gluts of evoo and some salt and pepper. slice the zucchini lengthwise {we did coins because of the type of zucchini} and add to the bowl, toss to coat. grill the zucchini until it softens and you get those gorgouse grills lines. arrange the zucchini on plates for each person.

fry up the eggs how you like 'em. we like some pasture butter and a quick fry so the yolk is still runny.

to assemble, spread some of the jam on top of the plated zucchini and top with an egg or two. break off some leaves of mint and sprinkle on top. a final bit of evoo and some salt and pepper and you are good to go. oh, unless you want to add some pecorino or parm to that...

bon appétit!

and p.s. that jam is out of this world. we are absolutely making that stuff again. i can almost taste it with some goat cheese on some of my hubby's grilled sourdough. totally going to tartine it up!

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we were be able to get so creative with items from our CSA: ronde de nice zucchini + raw honey + rosemary + farm fresh eggs + mint. i love it when a plan comes together!

thanks for the food, agritopia. and thanks for the inspiration, chris bianco. yup, i'm sure they are reading this...